


Skater Boy

by two_of_swords



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fun and Angst and Skateboarding, Gen, Ronan Lynch is a kind and thoughtful friend, TRC Gen and Rarepair Winter Exchange 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_of_swords/pseuds/two_of_swords
Summary: “The town I grew up in had this rad little skatepark with all these ledges and rails to grind on.”“What the fuck does that even mean?”





	Skater Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is written for Gwendolyn (grendelline/ghoultwink on Tumblr) as part of the TRC Gen and Rarepair Winter Exchange 2018. Gwendolyn requested Noah & Ronan and/or Blue hanging out pre-TRK with a blend of angst and fun and skateboarding. Please enjoy!!
> 
> Credit for the term dickflip goes to toast-the-unknowing, as does the lesson that ASSonance is always funnier than alliteration. Thank you!!

Ronan lounged on his back on Monmouth’s leather sofa, legs bent at the knee and dangling over the armrest, a box of Lucky Charms balanced on his stomach. Every so often, he reached into the box and grabbed a magically delicious handful and shoved it into his mouth. Gansey would not approve of his cereal eating methods, but Gansey wasn’t home, so it didn’t matter.

Ronan turned his head to the side as he munched and watched Noah attempt to play pool. He didn’t quite have enough energy to hold the pool stick properly so he quickly gave up on that and just started rolling the balls back and forth across the table. Ronan was pretty sure Noah just liked the little  _ click clack _ noise the balls made when they hit each other. He smirked at the thought. After a while though, it started to get on his nerves. He threw a piece a cereal at Noah. It hit him right on the bridge of his nose. Chainsaw, who was perched on the other armrest, perked up in response.

“Hey!” Noah exclaimed.

“Why do you do that?” Ronan asked.

Noah shrugged. “Why do you do  _ that _ ?” He gestured to the cereal.

Ronan threw another piece of cereal in Noah’s direction - this time he sacrificed a marshmallow. Noah was ready for it, though, and caught it in his mouth. The marshmallow disappeared.

“Where the fuck did it go? I thought you couldn’t eat.”

Noah sat on the edge of the pool table. “I don’t know how it works.”

“Are you going to even digest it?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“You’re fucked up,” Noah laughed.

“I suppose,” Ronan grinned. They tossed more cereal back and forth and were only marginally successful at actually catching the pieces in their mouths. The rest lay scattered across the sofa and the floor and the pool table. Chainsaw ran busily from piece to piece, picking them up with her beak and tossing them around, deciding each time that the bits were not appetising enough to eat or shiny enough to keep, but unable to stop herself from checking each one.

Adam walked through the door then, back from doing Cabeswater’s bidding, but neither Ronan or Noah moved. 

“What are you guys doing?” he asked, eyeing the mess.

“Testing spiritual digestive habits,” Ronan responded.

Adam approached Ronan and reached into the box of cereal for his own handful, pressing the box intentionally hard into Ronan’s stomach.

Ronan gasped. “Take it easy, Parrish.”

“I could have used your help today, Lynch.”

“Doing what?”

“Scaring off some skateboarders from that park by the Fresh Eagle so I could fix a fray in the line.”

“Heh. How’d you get them to leave? Did you do that freaky vacant eye thing you do sometimes when you’re looking at those devil cards? That would make me run.”

Adam didn’t explain himself, but instead threw his own piece of cereal at Ronan’s head. It bounced off his forehead and disappeared in between the couch cushions, never to be seen again. Chainsaw squawked in dismay.

Noah laughed and then said, “I used to have a skateboard too.”

“Good for you, skater boy,” Ronan said. He lifted Chainsaw onto the cushion beside his head so she could resume her search, as if she didn’t have wings and couldn't just lift her damn self.

“Too?” Adam asked.

“Ronan has one in his room,” Noah responded. Adam’s eyes lit up.

“At the Barns. You’ve never been there,” Ronan accused.

Noah shrugged again.

“And you think my scrying is creepy,” Adam said, shaking his head. “I gotta go get ready for work.”

“Hey. Thanks for stopping by, man.”

“No problem. Thanks for the snack,” Adam grinned, stealing another large handful of cereal before heading out the door.

Once Adam left, Ronan sat up straight, causing a new avalanche of cereal bits to fall to the floor. Chainsaw flapped her wings in excitement and hopped back down. Noah was sitting cross-legged on the pool table by now, but he was fading. Ronan didn’t want him to go yet. He never wanted him to go.

“So you owned a skateboard, but did you actually use it?” he asked.

Noah blinked at him and Ronan thought he was going to disappear without answering, but then the temperature dropped and Ronan felt the warmth begin to leak from his fingertips. 

Noah, solidified by Ronan’s stolen energy, said, “Oh yes! All the time. Well, until…”

“You fucking died?”

“No, until I became friends with…”

“Don’t say his name.”

“Fine. Did you use yours?”

“Only in a dream once. Do you miss it?” Ronan’s fingers were numb.

“When I’m strong enough to remember it,” Noah said, smiling widely. “The town I grew up in had this rad little skatepark with all these ledges and rails to grind on.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“I’d show you, if I were…”

“Alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Life fucking sucks.”

“It’ll get better.”

“When?”

Noah looked away. After a few minutes of silence, he disappeared completely. 

An idea pierced Ronan’s mind as the pins and needles of feeling returned to his fingers.

 

A few days later, Ronan patrolled the parking lot of Mountain View High looking for Blue’s bicycle. He spotted it chained to the bike rack near the front entrance of the school. He parked the BMW nearby, popped the trunk and waited to make sure the coast was clear. Nobody approached his vehicle. Nobody came out of the school. It seemed surprisingly early in the school year for security to be so lax already.

He got out of the car and pulled a pair of bolt cutters and an identical, dreamt-up bike lock from the trunk. He quickly snapped off Blue’s lock and wheeled the bike around the building to an empty bike rack near the side entrance of the school next to the gymnasium. Nobody stopped him. He secured the dream lock around the bike and tapped to activate it. It glowed for ten seconds before returning to its seemingly normal, non-dream existence.

Ronan snuck back to his car, stashed the cutters and the broken lock in the trunk and closed it gingerly before moving to a parking spot in the faculty lot across from the gym, well in view of the bike’s new location. He waited and watched. He watched as the buses lined up out front ten minutes before the bell rang. He watched as the students spilled out of the building, pooling by the old bike rack if they were taking the bus or trickling in the direction of the student parking lot if they had a car. Nobody looked his direction.

He continued to watch as an exasperated Blue turned the corner of the building and discovered her bike at the distant rack. She shook her head, confused, before heading in that direction, away from the unruly crowd of students. Ronan stifled a laugh and waited for her to try out the lock. She set down her bag and bent over it briefly, before leaping back as if it were on fire. Ronan couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that. To Blue’s credit, she didn’t yelp or scream, but just stared at the lock, likely recognizing it for the dream thing that it was. She looked up and began searching the rows of nearby cars for the likely culprit. Ronan flashed his headlights. 

Blue’s face was murderous as she threw her bag over her shoulder and approached the driver’s side door of the BMW. Delighted, Ronan rolled down the window. “Get in.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What? No.” He could tell that was not really the first thing she wanted to say.

“Come on. It’s for a good cause,” Ronan reasoned.

Blue glanced around. Nobody was looking their direction.

“And where exactly are we going?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

“What if I had to work?”

“You don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I fucking pay attention, Sargent.”

Blue couldn’t argue with that. She got in the car. Ronan drove quite respectfully out of the school parking lot.

 

Ronan explained the plan to Blue on the way to Monmouth, which seemed like the most logical place to pick up a ghost.

“This is really nice, Ronan,” Blue said, puzzled.

“God, Sargent, stop acting so surprised.”

" _You_ told me not to get used to it.”

“So I did,” Ronan grinned, pleased that she remembered.

“What if he doesn’t show?”

“He’ll show.”

They didn’t even have to go upstairs to get Noah. He loitered near the door to the apartment stairs as they drove into the overgrown lot. Ronan slid up beside him and rolled down the passenger window. “Get in.”

Noah vanished and reappeared in the backseat, no questions asked.

Blue sighed.

“Hi!” Noah said, cheerfully, patting her head.

“Noah! What if we were going to do something dangerous? Don’t you even care to ask where we’re going?”

“I’m dead. What does it matter? And you’re already in the car with Ronan, so it can’t be that bad.” Ronan and Noah shared a conspiratorial grin.

“What’s that about?” Blue asked.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Ronan said, peeling out of the drive before she could protest. Now was not the time to discuss past vehicular transgressions.

The way Adam had described it, Ronan expected to see a couple of stoner skaters hanging out at a regular park being menaces. Instead, Ronan saw Noah’s eyes grow wide in the rearview mirror as they approached a full service skatepark.

“Woah!” Noah murmured.

Ronan parked nearby and they all scrambled out of the car.

Ronan opened the trunk again, this time removing a skateboard. 

“Hey! My bike lock! What did you do to it?”

“The new one’s better, Sargent. It lights up and shit, for when you have to leave Nino’s after dark.”

“How thoughtful,” Blue said. She stared at him like he had three heads again.

He waved her away as they walked over to the collection of cement ramps and ledges and carved out pools with no water. It wasn’t hard to imagine how the ley line had been disrupted by such an odd grouping of stone and metal. Ronan struggled to imagine what Adam had to do to fix it.

Noah stretched and hummed. “The line’s strong here. I feel strong.”

“Good,” Ronan said, handing Noah the skateboard. “Show us your moves, Czerny.”

Noah clutched it awkwardly to his chest, wheels spinning, like it had been ages since he had held something so solid. “Really? You think I can?”

“Parrish just repaired the alignment here and Sargent can amplify. You can pull energy from me if you need it and the board too, probably. You should be able to do plenty of dickflips or whatever.”

Noah laughed uproariously. “Kickflip. It’s called a kickflip,” he corrected, once he calmed down.

“Sure,” Ronan shrugged.

Noah set the skateboard down near the launch ramp and stepped on tentatively. He smiled brightly at Blue and Ronan before confidently kicking off and swooping down the side of the bowl.

“Oh my...” Blue said, barely above a whisper, clearly as stunned as Ronan. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together and even Ronan felt the magnified power of the ley line. He didn’t think Noah would need any energy from him at all.

Blue and Ronan stood silently side-by-side and watched Noah zoom around, performing different jumps and tricks in his rumpled Aglionby uniform. Aside from his superior skill level, there was no reason to differentiate him from any of the other kids in the park.

“He’s really fucking good,” Ronan said, forgetting to not act too excited. He turned to Blue. She nodded, but he could see the strain on her face. He hadn’t meant for this to be so taxing for her. He called for Noah and waved him over.

“You wanna give it a try?” Noah asked, as alive and animated as they had ever seen him.

“Fuck no.” Ronan answered, immediately.

“Come on, Lynch,” Noah teased.

“Sargent’s about to pass out and it’s going to be dark soon. I think we should go.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry!” He hugged Blue tight and handed the skateboard back to Ronan. “It’s okay. You can let go now.”

Blue’s face relaxed, but Noah’s looked a little less alive with every step towards the car and away from the park. He was barely hanging on by the time they retrieved Blue’s bike from the school and dropped them both off at Fox Way. 

When Ronan pulled back into the Monmouth lot, Noah wasn’t much more than a memory. He smiled widely and mouthed “thank you” and disappeared. Ronan sighed and slumped forward, pressing his forehead to the steering wheel. He stayed that way until Gansey knocked on the window and scared the shit out of him.

“Ronan, what are you doing?” Gansey asked, yanking the door open. “Is something wrong? Did you have a bad day?”

“No,” Ronan replied, truthfully. “It was the best.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm @two-of-swords-621 on Tumblr, where asks, messages, likes and reblogs are always welcome. <3


End file.
